() cd16cugrant15d Researchers at the The University of Colorado at Boulder line the 2nd story of the LASP building to hear the announcement that the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics will lead a multimillion dollar mission by NASA to study the past climate of Mars, supported by the largest research contract ever awarded to CU-Boulder. Joe Amon, The Denver Post

() cd16cugrant15ab Bruce Benson, president of the University of Colorado announced at a news briefing today, the selection of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics by NASA to lead a multimillion dollar mission to study the past climate of Mars, supported by the largest research contract ever awarded to CU-Boulder. Joe Amon, The Denver Post

BOULDER — Mars — which has tantalized scientists and science fiction writers for decades — will soon be given unprecedented scrutiny, thanks to the largest research contract ever awarded to the University of Colorado at Boulder.

A proposal from CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics has been selected by NASA over 19 others to lead a $485 million orbiting space mission slated to launch in 2013.

The project will probe the Red Planet’s atmosphere, climate history and potential for harboring life in greater detail than ever before.

In a prepared statement Monday, NASA officials said the lab’s proposal was selected because it provided the “best science value and lowest implementation risk” of all those received.

“This mission will provide the first direct measurements ever taken to address key scientific questions about Mars’ evolution,” Doug McCuistion,

director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Mars Exploration Program, said in a release.

The contract, and the lab’s role in the research mission, places Colorado second only to California in dollars generated in the state from space manufacturing and research, said CU President Bruce Benson. It also gives CU elevated status in the research world when it comes to studying space.

“This work is helping us become the university of the universe,” Benson said.

The CU lab’s team will design experiments and build and operate some of the instruments that will be aboard the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, or MAVEN. Lockheed Martin of Littleton will build the spacecraft.

Carrying three instrument suites, the probe will study the upper atmosphere of Mars and its interactions with the sun, said Bruce Jakosky, the lab’s associate director and principal investigator for the mission.

MAVEN will be the second mission of the space agency’s Mars Scout program, a recent push by the agency for smaller, lower-cost spacecraft. The first, the Phoenix, was launched in 2007 and is operating on the surface of Mars.

Scientists will use MAVEN’s data to study the loss of volatile compounds such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and water from the Martian atmosphere and the role that loss has played in the planet’s evolution, said Jakosky. The results should help researchers peer into the history of Mars’ atmosphere and water.

“We have an outstanding mission that will obtain fundamental science results for Mars,” said Jakosky, an internationally known Mars expert.

The three instrument suites on board the craft will include a remote sensing package to be built at the CU space lab. A particles and fields payload built by the University of California, Berkeley with support from the CU lab and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center will contain six instruments that will characterize the solar wind, upper atmosphere and the ionosphere — a layer of charged particles very high in the Martian atmosphere.

In all, about 200 people in Colorado will work on the project. MAVEN will also draw a number of CU-Boulder graduate and undergraduate students in the coming years. The university can expect to receive about $6 million in mission planning funds over the next year with the amount to grow as the launch nears.

“Previous missions only really looked at the lower atmosphere of Mars, but this one will give details about the upper atmosphere that will tell us a lot more about this planet,” Jakosky said.

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